State Department Stupidity: Praising Saudi’s on Terrorism

Sometimes you have to wonder about the State Department. Do you think they live in the same Country as we do? Saudi Arabia act as terrorisms Rich Uncle. The “moderate” country of Saudi Arabia our “best buddies” in the war on against terror, continues to be one of the major exporters of Terror in the world. Starting with the fact that the Saudi flavor of Islam, the Wahhabist ideology, is radicalizing young Muslims throughout the world, and ending with the fact that Saudi Big Shots are supplying cash to Obama’s terrorist storm troopers and the fact that it is estimated that almost 50% of the foreign fighters in Iraq are from the Saudi kingdom.

If this is the information out in the open can you imagine what the State Department knows that we don’t? Yet Yesterday Ambassador Dell Dailey counter terrorism expert of the StateDepartment PRAISED the Saudis for their anti-terror efforts….HUH?

WASHINGTON — A Saudi Arabian re-education program that treats terrorists as victims of a misguided ideology and not criminals to be warehoused for life in a cell is winning praise from America’s top ambassador for counterterrorism.

At a talk yesterday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ambassador Dell Dailey said, “The Saudi program is about the best program in existence today. … It is geared for the Saudi people, it is focused on their people and treats them as a victim, not a criminal.”

Mr. Dailey, a retired lieutenant general in the Army who commanded special operations at MacDill Air Force Base before taking his counterterrorism post at the State Department, said that when he first asked about the program, a prison break inside the kingdom came up in conversation with his Saudi counterparts. Eventually, the Saudis found the escaped convicts and killed them in a bloody shoot out.

“My comment to the leadership was to take the picture of this person extolling the virtue of being killed and match it up with the person being killed. This would send a message, ‘This is what happens to jail breakers,'” Mr. Dailey said.

But the ambassador’s Saudi interlocutor countered, “This is not what we want to do because showing the body would embarrass the family.” Mr. Dailey quoted him as saying, “We want to take the picture and show it one-on-one to the family, and ask, ‘How can we help you, mom and dad, and convince others not to do this?'”

Reports in the Saudi press last month after Saudi Arabia released 1,500 jihadists in this program noted that those released only had to forswear jihad on the Arabian Peninsula. Al Watan quoted one of the program’s directors, Muhammad al-Nujaimi, as saying, “After several graded sessions with the committee, and having been convinced of their misguided vision, they renounced their erroneous ideologies, including the concept of driving out all infidels from the Arabian Peninsula.”

After counseling with psychologists and religious experts, and after a member of the terrorist’s family is asked to vouch for the newly released relative, the graduated ex-terrorist signs a statement against attacks inside the Saudi Kingdom, against joining a terrorist group and even attacking Western non-Muslims inside Saudi Arabia. But according to two American intelligence officials who have reviewed these contracts, the agreement carefully makes no mention of jihad outside of Saudi Arabia.

Ambassador Dailey yesterday said, “I can’t say specifically if in the program they are allowed to go off and do jihad in other countries.” He later said that if he found this to be the case, he would ask the Saudis to reform the program he had praised.

When asked yesterday about the fact that a recent cache of Al Qaeda in Iraq documents found disclosed that more than 50% of foreign fighters in Iraq came from Saudi Arabia, the ambassador urged limited patience. “This effort for the hearts and minds, to go to the root causes is a generational challenge,” he said. He later added, “We have to give them some time. But not too much time.”

The Saudis present a conundrum for American foreign policy on a number of levels. On the one hand Riyadh is seen as a pillar of a new alliance against Iranian hegemony in the Middle East and in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. In the new year, the Pentagon is scheduled to begin the sale of $20 billion in advanced missile guidance systems to royal family’s Air Force.

But on the other hand, the Islamic supremacist ideology that has inspired Al Qaeda known as Salafism is also the state religion of Saudi Arabia. Saudi charities throughout the 1990s and even in some cases after 2001 fund jihad at the borders of the Muslim world. In particular, the theological doctrine of Takfir, that allows adherents to murder, steal from and lie to non-believers is still a pillar of the state exported religious doctrine.

Skeptics of the Saudi re-education program argue that it fails to address these deeper doctrinal matters. The director of the Gulf and Energy Policy program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Simon Henderson, yesterday said, “The Saudi rehabilitation process is really being judged at the moment by what the Saudis say about it, and I personally look for a more neutral assessment. I remain to be convinced that the Saudi program is the best model for combating jihadists. Saudi Arabia has had a long tradition of exporting its radicals. Think Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia. It has also happened in Iraq. Has the tradition really ended? And has this program cured the problem? I am not yet convinced.”

The director of the Homeland Security Policy Initiative at George Washington University, Frank Cilluffo, however yesterday said he was keeping an open mind. “These kinds of programs could have great significance,” he said. “But we need greater empirical data. We need to know greater transparency, we need to track it further for recidivism.”

Mr. Dailey however said the important component of the Saudi program in part was that they had developed one on their own to meet their society’s needs.

The former special operations commander, Mr. Dailey, said the struggle against terrorism overall was not primarily a military task. He said that he considered democracy promotion and border control, for example, to be a key component of his job. Also, Mr. Dailey said he did not use the phrase, “war on terror,” when addressing international audiences. When asked what he thought of the phrase yesterday, he responded by asking the questioner, “How many times did I use it today?”?”

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